The Baker Street Letters Read online

  He poured the first Scotch and began his assessment.

  And it broke out like this:

  Regarding the simple purpose of getting Nigel to report to the disciplinary hearing and get his career restored: That was already a bust, whether or not Nigel cared—if the Law Society had not heard yet of the goings-on in Nigel’s chambers, they soon would. And a criminal indictment—either in London or in America, and even if Nigel was ultimately acquitted—would certainly fry any remaining sympathy the tribunal had toward him.

  But on the scale of things, that concern was becoming minor.

  Because the next item was Ocher’s murder. In that regard, all Reggie had only accomplished was to learn that someone for some reason twenty years ago had—apparently—put one set of data into a map that the eight-year-old Mara had sent to Sherlock Holmes and another set of data into a geological database that construction firms throughout Los Angeles used in planning their digs.

  Certainly there could be a connection between those occurrences. But Reggie didn’t even have the map itself. As far as the court in London was concerned, if Nigel was charged, Reggie had nothing exculpatory at all.

  He finished the first Glenfiddich. The minibottles in this hotel seemed smaller than normal. He poured the second.

  The next item was Mara’s murdered neighbor. Well, there was a winner. Instead of clearing Nigel of Ocher’s murder, Reggie, by his mere presence at the wrong time under that overpass, had made both him and Nigel suspects in another. Not Reggie’s fault, true, but that was not the point. The point was that between them, Reggie and Nigel had dug the hole deeper.

  Not to mention Reggie’s unintentional assistance in leading the police to Nigel. No question whose fault that was.

  And then there was Mara herself, who had sent the original map that was at the root of it all—and now Reggie had lost track of her as well.

  It was time to get up from that chair. Reggie knew it, but he remained seated. There was one more thing to worry about.

  Laura.

  But he couldn’t even begin to suss that out at the moment. He opened the two minibourbons and poured them both together into his glass.

  Some time passed after that; Reggie was in no condition to judge precisely how long. And then suddenly he was awake—to early morning light and to the scent of something, somewhere, that was burning.

  He was up in an instant—there was no smoke in the room.

  He went to the window, where the pungent, syrupy odor was stronger. It smelled like burning creosote, as if they were tarring the street below.

  But they weren’t. There was in fact no one in the street at all, at the beginning of a workday.

  Reggie went downstairs.

  Other hotel guests had begun to accumulate in the lobby. It was a subway fire, someone said. The bellman said the police wanted everyone to stay inside.

  But they had left no one there to enforce the order.

  There were no pedestrians when Reggie stepped outside, and there were no cars. Everything was blocked off.

  From the smoke and the fire trucks still blaring their way in, the source was farther south. Reggie began walking quickly in that direction. He got around the first set of barricades at Alameda with no trouble.

  In a few more blocks, the burning odor became so strong that it stung, and now Reggie could see the reason why.

  The street itself was on fire—or more precisely, what was beneath the street. Orange-and-blue flames licked through thin fissures in the asphalt and around the edges of the iron sewer covers.

  He walked on all the way to the frontage road bordering the subway dig.

  But the smoke was from the left, and he turned in that direction. He passed a cut-and-cover trench, from which a line of ungrouted holes sprouted low, even flames, like the jets of a gas stove.

  Now he was at the center of it all, just yards from the new tunnel opening.

  A policewoman noticed. “See the tape?” she yelled. “Get on the other side of it!”

  “Channel Seven,” said Reggie. It seemed worth a try, since a decent jacket and properly spoken English seemed to indicate a newscaster in Los Angeles. “My crew got here ahead of me, they should be around here somewhere.”

  “Right over there—” She pointed. “But try to stay out of the way.”

  At the other side of the street, the Channel 7 news van had in fact just arrived. Channel 7 had the prime spot, at the edge of the barricade closest to the tunnel. Reggie got there just as the reporter began.

  “I’m just yards away from the second subway fire this year. Six weeks ago a blaze in the North Lankershim site, at the opposite end of the Silver Line, claimed the life of a worker there. Today, at the downtown site, in a scene reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno, we may be looking at a tragedy just as bad. Behind me—”

  Reggie pushed forward through the gathering crowd for a better look. There was a particularly advantageous position—where two barricades intersected—that provided an angle on the tunnel entrance itself.

  The available space there was already occupied by an old man with a stubby white beard and a shorter, slender person in a hooded sweatshirt. But as Reggie approached, the old man shuffled off to the south, muttering, and Reggie shouldered his way in to take his place.

  He immediately got an elbow in his ribs from the hooded sweatshirt.

  “I’m standing here, jerk.”

  Reggie looked down, and the hooded face looked up for the first time.

  It was Mara.

  They recognized each other immediately. She did not seem pleased. Reggie saw her eyes shift to the south for an exit route and then back toward the tunnel. She hesitated but remained in place.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Reggie said. “My brother thinks you’re in danger.”

  She did not respond right away. Reggie watched her expression, and he saw her think about saying one thing and then settle on something else instead.

  “Not your concern,” was all she said.

  And now she wasn’t even looking at Reggie; she was focused on the tunnel entrance, where two police officers came into view, followed by medics bearing a man on a stretcher.

  Mara pushed forward, past the news cameras, to get a better look.

  Reggie tried to follow to keep track of her. But suddenly they were caught in a pool of blinding white light as the Channel 7 news crew came up behind them. Reggie shielded the glare from his eyes, and after a blinking moment he saw Mara turn and begin to walk quickly away from the scene.

  He ran and caught up with her, walking briskly alongside.

  “Please talk to me,” he said.

  “Stay away from me,” she said, not slowing her pace.

  “Do you know the man on the stretcher?”

  “No.”

  She was heading toward the edge of the barricade; there were police cars parked there and uniformed officers standing about. And there was a pale blue 1960s Volkswagen Beetle that Reggie had seen outside her apartment and guessed was probably hers.

  She had been walking quickly, but now she suddenly slowed.

  Reggie followed her line of sight and saw the point of concern.

  Between them and the blue Volkswagen was Detective Mendoza, standing by a barricade and talking to a Valley Transportation Authority official and a man in a hard yellow hat.

  “You’d better leave me alone,” she said to Reggie. “I see our friend over there.”

  She had a point. But something in her demeanor made him think she had not stopped short for his benefit.

  “Considerate of you, but it’s no problem as far as I’m concerned,” Reggie said, bluffing.

  “Sure it is,” she said. “He probably thinks you killed my neighbor.”

  “You think otherwise, or you would have called Mendoza over by now. And whoever killed your neighbor had something to do with you—or with the letter you wrote to Sherlock Holmes.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “That’s why
he was always at your post box—to intercept whatever you received. And he talked his way inside to steal whatever you kept from years ago.”

  She ignored this and started walking again, but this time on a trajectory that would take her to the car without crossing conspicuously in front of Mendoza.

  Reggie kept pace.

  “I know why I’m avoiding Detective Mendoza,” said Reggie as soon as they approached her car. “Why are you?”

  “I’m not. And if you don’t get lost now, I’ll start screaming and we’ll see who is more afraid of the law.”

  “I have just one question, then I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Make it quick.”

  “Where is your father?”

  “My father left twenty years ago,” she said, getting very angry now. “We had that conversation already.”

  “I think your father is back—or at least, I think you think he’s back. That’s why you came here tonight. That’s why you were at the tunnel trying to see who they loaded into the ambulance.”

  She had no immediate response to that; Reggie could see her trying to think of something.

  “Maybe I’m practicing to be a lawyer,” she said. “You know, chasing ambulances.”

  “I don’t think that’s it,” said Reggie, and if that was all she could muster, he knew he must be hitting close.

  “Even if my father were back, why would I think he’d be in the tunnel?” said Mara. “He was not a sandhog.”

  “Your father was a geological surveyor.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he survey this tunnel?”

  Mara looked back at the tunnel, at the smoke still pouring from the entrance.

  “I was eight. I didn’t read the things. I don’t know what he was surveying. It could have been anything. Anywhere.”

  “The map your father made is the key to proving that someone other than my brother had the motive to commit two murders. Without the map, he goes to prison.”

  This seemed to give her pause.

  “That could really happen? Your brother could be convicted?”

  “Odds are, yes. For at least one of them.”

  They had reached her Volkswagen now. She stopped.

  “I’d help you if I could,” she said. “But the map is gone, you saw that.”

  “What was taken from your flat was a copy. Did you send the original to Baker Street?”

  “Of course not. I was a child, not stupid. I didn’t send my original through the mail. I made two copies. I sent one and kept the other copy in that box.”

  “What about the original?”

  She looked as though she hadn’t thought about that in many years. Then she said, “I put it in a safe place.”

  “Where? What safe place? A bank?”

  “I was eight. You think I had a safe deposit box?”

  “Then where?” said Reggie.

  She hesitated. For a moment, she looked as though she might tell him what he needed to know.

  “People may have died because of this map,” said Reggie, pressing his case. “Important data may have been falsified.”

  Now her expression changed—and Reggie knew he had blundered.

  “You’re saying that my father falsified a geological map?”

  “No,” Reggie said quickly, attempting a tactical retreat. “Not necessarily.”

  Too late. Her expression had hardened.

  “Your brother should not have come here,” she said. “And neither should you.”

  With that, she opened the Volkswagen door abruptly into Reggie’s knee, got in, and locked the door.

  “Agreed on that,” said Reggie, but he knew she didn’t hear him, because she was already driving away.

  It was already twenty minutes of eight when Mara drove off, and Reggie finally had the chance to remember his brother’s scheduled arraignment.

  He found a cab and made it to the courthouse just two minutes before the hour.

  Laura was sitting on the steps waiting for him, ignoring the second looks from the pin-striped attorneys going inside.

  “You didn’t sleep well, did you?” she said, assessing him.

  “No,” said Reggie. “I think that must be the general rule over here.”

  They went inside and took seats in the crowded courtroom. The detainees for the eight A.M. arraignment were just at that moment filing in.

  Nigel was not among them.

  The first arraignment took place. Then another. An armed robbery, a carjacking, and two felony drug possessions with intent to sell.

  Nigel had still not appeared and his case had not been called.

  “Is this right?” said Laura.

  “No,” said Reggie.

  They exited the courtroom and walked down the corridor to the court clerk’s office.

  “When is the arraignment for Nigel Heath?” Reggie asked.

  The clerk pressed a couple of keys at her terminal. “That was yesterday. Night court.”

  “What? It was scheduled for eight this morning.”

  “What can I tell you? It was moved up.”

  “Why was it moved up?”

  “I don’t know, light docket, maybe. I don’t control these things.”

  “Was a bail amount set?”

  The clerk, annoyed now, pressed more keys. “Bail was set in the amount of one million dollars, and it was posted, and he was discharged an hour after the arraignment.”

  This news was so astonishing that the woman was almost able to shut her window before Reggie could react.

  “Who posted the bail?” he said quickly.

  “I don’t have that information, sir.”

  “It should be part of the public record.”

  “It hasn’t been entered yet. Will that be all?”

  It was all. The woman closed the window, and Reggie turned back to Laura.

  “You’re sure you had the time right?” said Laura.

  “Of course I did,” said Reggie. It was unusual for Laura to question his reliability. “It was moved up.”

  “Why would—”

  “Might have been routine. Or someone with influence might have made it happen. But there’s no way Nigel managed a one-million-dollar bail on his own.”

  “Well, I didn’t post it.”

  “Nor I.”

  “So who would have the kind of clout to get Nigel’s arraignment moved up—and post a million-dollar bail?”

  “I’m wondering that, too.”

  They both stopped to ponder this on the courthouse steps.

  “And he didn’t contact you?” said Laura.

  “No.”

  “Then—where would he have gone?”

  “The girl,” said Reggie, flagging down a cab. “He would go to see about the girl.”

  The traffic was actually light as they approached Mara’s block; the fire had been all over the news, and everyone who could do so and who didn’t regard fires as spectator sport was avoiding the downtown.

  They stopped in front of Mara’s building.

  Across the street, the little café had its brave OPEN sign in the window. The cook stood in front of the doorway, smoking a cigarette on the empty walkway, then went inside.

  In the distance to the south, the barricades to the tunnel sight were visible. The smoke was gone, but the burnt smell lingered.

  They went up the stairs to Mara’s flat.

  Reggie knocked.

  They waited. No response.

  “They could be here, you know,” said Laura. “Both of them. I mean, if Nigel got out early on bail, came here, and had a reason for not letting anyone know, he wouldn’t just pop over to the door when anyone knocks.”

  “You have a point,” said Reggie. “If you assume that she would have let Nigel in at all.”

  “Perhaps she likes him better than she does you,” said Laura. And then, on Reggie’s look: “Well, it’s possible. And of course the girl might not want to talk to any of us at all, so if she’s in, and saw us from the window, s
he’d just be sitting tight.”

  Reggie nodded. “So what do you suggest?”

  “Better use your more annoying knock. Just in case Nigel is there.”

  Reggie used his more annoying knock, not all knuckles at once but in staccato succession, and loudly, three times. It was obnoxious. He knew Nigel would recognize it.

  Still no response.

  “Now what?” said Laura.

  “Whether Nigel is here or not,” said Reggie, “I still need the map. It’s the only real lead we’ve got.”

  “And we think it’s in here?”

  “If it’s anywhere. She said she kept it in a safe place.”

  “So . . .”

  “So now one of us is going to commit a felony,” said Reggie.

  “Brilliant,” said Laura, digging enthusiastically into her handbag for a charge card.

  “Wait,” said Reggie. He placed his hand on the doorknob.

  “Oh, surely not,” said Laura.

  Reggie tried it. The handle turned.

  “Unlocked?” said Laura. “Are they so trusting here?”

  “No,” said Reggie. “They’re not.”

  He pushed the door open a crack. He called Mara’s name. No response.

  He pushed the door farther and then waited, just in case, for an onrush from the dog. But there was nothing.

  They both stepped inside.

  “This can’t be good,” Reggie said softly. “Let me check first.”

  He walked through the kitchen to the fire escape and looked out. No one. He checked quickly for anyone in the bedroom or bath, then returned to the front room, where Laura had already switched on the floor lamp to take it all in.

  “The couch is wrong,” she said.

  “You need to allow for American tastes. And I think she may be on a bit of a budget.”

  “Her taste is perfect, and so is the arrangement. Which makes it a bit odd for the angle of the couch to be just out of kilter.”

  Reggie looked closely at the foot of the couch and saw the indentations in the thin carpet.

  “And there’s a bit of wicker broken off from the magazine basket,” continued Laura. “It wouldn’t just be lying there. She’s too tidy for that. There’s not a speck of dust in the room.”